What Imaginary Rules Are You Following?
The Ladder of Inference
“Your problem is, you spent your whole life thinking there are rules. There aren’t. We used to be gorillas. All we had is what we could take and defend.” (Fargo)
The Ladder of Inference was initially developed by Chris Argyris:
We don’t perceive the world with perfectly objective senses. They emerge from our body, incorporating every possible signal—posture, clothes, facial expressions—into the lessons we’ve learned over a lifetime, colored by our desires and feelings to figure out what we can and should do next.
What are you assuming?
Do you feel like you have to clean the kitchen tonight? Entertain others? Shave your legs? Look at Instagram?
Like you have to take advice that doesn’t sit right, just because your mentor/boss/friend has been in the industry longer, or knows that one person?
Like you have to be strong for your partner/friends/family, and aren’t allowed to ask for a hug?
Like your friend is going to be mad if you stop doing that thing every week that you hate?
Like you have to buy all the presents this holiday season for everyone? Put up all of the decorations?
Like you can’t get a job and leave that family member home a few days a week?
That your blog posts/newsletter drafts have to be absolutely perfect and stunning or no one will follow you and you’ll never be able to get paid to write again?
That in order to be productive, you have to get up at 5am and run 10 miles?
That things have to be perfect or your partner/parents won’t love you?
That you can’t say MY NEW BOOK IS OUT TODAY because you’ll look like a crazy self-promoter?
Think about all of the lessons you picked up from parents, teachers, classmates, pop culture, social media, classes, books, and friends. These “lessons” form our mental models of how we think the world works—the most fundamental part of how to change a system—and it possible that they’re all false.
You Can Do Anything
Any time I ask myself if I can do something, I try to remember: of course I can do anything—as long as I’m willing to live with the consequences. The twist is that I don’t even know what the consequences are going to be. I need to stop assuming that I think I know what’s going to happen.
Today, let’s make our own rules.